>I'm approaching Feats as being the emulation of the myths
>of the god. That means that the Feat is supposed to work in some way
>related to what the god did at some point in creation. I also accept
>that there are myths yet to be told. HOWEVER, if a person (be it
>Greg or someone else) writing a Hero Wars/Quest product puts a Feat
>in there, it means that there's some mythic basis. Somewhere. If I
>don't know it, I run the risk of colliding with it later. And yeah,
>YGMV, but you know what? Every time one changes something away from
>the original, the more the changes snowball.
The unhelpful version :
So what? Enjoy the snowball!
The helpful version :
(1) There is never going to be any more of a mythic basis than we have for
99% of feats. Most are generalised abilities based on the myths - Humakt
thus gets "sword help", "shield breaker", "decapitate foe". These aren't
specific "here's a myth where the god did this, and you can do exactly the
same thing" they are broader "here's the kind of powers you can pray to
your god for". A few are, admittedly, poetic, but given that the single
largest culprit (still no one has suggested another!) has been illustrated
by Greg with a myth supporting half a dozen or so different approaches to
its meaning, I don't see that as a big problem.
(2) Myths vary even within a Glorantha. The Poss do everything wrong - they don't know the correct myths, they use their feats wrong, they worship wrong. As Nick once said, that's why they're always scratching. Given the existence of clan generators and such, I don't see Greg coming along any time and saying "Here's every form of every myth as told by every clan". He'd be stupid to even try.
(3) Glorantha is surprisingly resiliant. My Glorantha started out maybe 10-15% away from the one I read about in the early books. Its still about 10-15% different from the one I read about now. The world has got a lot more detailed, so that 10-15% has got bigger. But my point is that the changes haven't noticably snowballed.
(4) How can you run a game without risking being retconned? My players were in Whitewall when the Bat attacked. A year later, the city fell, Orlanth died. Shortly after the book came out and the Bat attack was part of the final assault on Whitewall. oops. If I worry about consistency, I can''t run a game. So I don't worry.
> > First, I disagree strongly that one correct way to interpret feats
>would be
> > nice - personally, I think that is awful.
>
>Perhaps I didn't express myself well, but I didn't ask for the one
>true way. I asked for better indications of where things came from.
I didn't comment on your thoughts at all. Don't take things quite so personally.
In case I haven't been clear enough, I'd love to see more myths, more examples, more ideas. But I suspect that however much we get won't satisfy some people, and I know it will never be enough to cover every feat out there.
Cheers,
Graham
-- Graham Robinson graham_at_... Albion Software Engineering Ltd.
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